Thursday, November 22, 2012

(I wrote this piece to explain, in response to a query
from an overseas friend, what went wrong with India’s anti-corruption
movement of the last two years and why I have no hopes from a faction of the
leadership of the movement that has decided to join the electoral fray.)

The anti-corruption
movement 2011-12 has been the biggest countrywide upsurge of the citizens
in India since the 1970s. The movement held out
hopes of broad democratic reforms amid the tightening stranglehold of the elite
over decision making and resources and its ongoing war against the majority of
the population. The movement was a stupendous success before it came crashing down.

Jan Lokpal Andolan – a movement of the Indian citizens
demanding an independent, especially empowered institution for investigating
and prosecuting cases of corruption – started in early 2011 amid a string of
scandals involving central and state ministers, legislators and other powerful
people.

Some of these corruption scandals – 2G spectrum scam and
Commonwealth Games scam, to name just two – have been unprecedented in terms of
the estimates, mostly official, of the public money siphoned off.

One such estimate, made by India’s
public auditor, has it that the 2G spectrum scam cost the public exchequer US$
32.15 billion in revenue lost.

Early 2011 coincided with the time when a period of high
economic growth, which started around 2004 and translated into a carnival of
rising incomes and consumption for the urban, middle class Indians, had been
petering out.

So the biggest beneficiaries of high growth among the
working households, who probably account for no more than 250 million of India’s
population of 1.21 billion, were realising that the party was finally over.

And that they had probably been taken for a ride; they’d
barely realized while the jamboree was on that they had been inveigled into
paying for everything – for privately provided education, healthcare,
transport, housing, savings instruments and even for using roads – amid a generally inflationary environment.

Bleak scenario

While publicly provided services, on the other hand, had
fallen into neglect since the advent of neo-liberal economic ‘reforms’ in 1991,
they went rapidly to seed after they were deserted by the educated and
politically significant middle classes.

Thus the majority of the population, which includes the most
vulnerable, the poorest and the barely educated, had since been left with
hospitals, schools, transport and other public services that are plagued with
cutbacks and corruption indulged in often by members of the same middle classes
that stopped using them in favour of private services.

This bleak scenario, where the urban Indians were also
supposed to be learning to look over their shoulders for 'global financial
crises' and 'recessions' that would take away their jobs, was heightened by
what appeared to be an open loot of public resources that, by all accounts, has
continued to the present day despite the anti-corruption movement.

The organisers of the Jan Lokpal Andolan, especially Arvind
Kejriwal, a Delhi-based activist who is considered the main planner of the
movement, underlined the fact that India
had no agency outside the government-political control that could independently
investigate complaints of corruption against the high and mighty, collect
evidence and take the cases to the courts for trials.

Their solution: a legislative proposal for such an agency
that was drafted, for the first time in India, not by bureaucrats, but by a
group of citizens through a process that allowed a degree of wider public
participation.

Only the corrupt will dispute the fact that India
has no system worth its salt to seriously fight corruption. India’s
anti-corruption apparatus does not even qualify as a pretense, not only because
all investigative agencies are under the thumb of the political executive, but
also because the government after government have demonstrated their
willingness to influence those agencies to undermine investigation into their
crimes and use them as a bargaining chip in striking deals over complaints of
corruption against the members of the opposition.

Further, the political class has by all accounts corrupted
the Parliament itself, which is constitutionally empowered to call the
government to account, striking mutually convenient deals and even buying and
selling votes behind closed doors.

The judiciary too has failed the ordinary people. Justice is
delayed as a rule and processes in lower courts are known to be blighted by
graft. The Supreme Courts and the high courts have also been facing allegations
of corruption against their judges without demonstrating the honesty to come
out clean in the eyes of the citizens.

The higher judiciary has shown no moral courage in the face
of enormous social injustice and has very often demonstrated its own class bias
by failing to take the side of the underprivileged.

War against bottom of
the pyramid

In fact, corruption is just a symptom of the open class
warfare being waged by the elite against the bottom of the socio-economic
pyramid, i.e. the majority of India’s
population. The country is now a proper plutocracy, ruled by the propertied and
the wealthy. Most of the members of Indian parliament are those whose assets,
even going by the deflated self-declarations, are valued Rs. 10 million each at
the very least; and they go up to Rs. six billion or probably more.

Needless to say, there is a cushy equation between the
politically powerful and the capitalists as is evident in the public policies
that subserve Big Business and the granting of lucrative public procurement
contracts and licences for exploiting natural resources to the cronies.

The neo-liberal state has also been using its ‘eminent
domain’ under the archaic Land Acquisition Act, 1894, to transfer land from
farmers to the capitalists at prices that impoverish the former and
stupendously enrich the latter.

And public services and assets are being turned into means
of private profit through ‘public-private partnerships’. The PPP concessions
not only exclude all those who cannot afford to pay, but also constitute an
assault on constitutional rights of the citizens and government’s
accountability to the public.

Massive turnouts

Led by Anna Hazare, an elderly activist who first earned
fame for leading the socio-economic rejuvenation of his village in western
Indian state of Maharashtra, Jan Lokpal
Andolan was successful in drawing the chastened, alarmed and increasingly
miserable middle classes out of their homes and into the streets.

It is this politically significant constituency which then
attracted the attention of the national TV channels which, in turn, helped to
turn the protests into a massive nationwide affair.

Though the anti-corruption movement remained anchored in
large cities and overly dependent on the corporate-controlled mass media, it
also drew support from the under-classes in the rural areas and smaller urban
areas.

Jan Lokpal Andolan has also been described as the first
that reached the scale of a countrywide citizens’ movement since the huge
rallies against Indira Gandhi government led by 'Loknayak' Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s. For
the youth and all those under 40, the movement provided their first experience
of a nationwide grassroots movement.

In its makeup and core demand, the movement appeared to be a
landmark in citizen awakening and held out the promise of wider democratic
reforms in the way the country had been governed by the elite who inherited from
the British a colonial mindset, not to mention the colonial laws and
conventions. Leaders of several social movements, such as Medha Patkar
of Narmada Bachao Andolan, either supported the anti-corruption movement
or saw it as a fillip to their own democratic causes.

At its peak, the movement was successful in extracting a
promise from the Parliament that an “independent” anti-corruption agency at the
centre as well as separate such agencies at the states would be established.
The promise, however, has remained a promise.

The entire political class, across the ideological spectrum,
came together to express its horror over the audacity of “a few self-appointed
champions of morality” to challenge the “sovereignty” of the Parliament.

“Laws are made in Parliament. Not on the streets,” was the
refrain of the politicians who showed their true ‘democratic’ colours by
pouring scorn on the people who sent them to the legislatures as their
representatives.

United colours of
corruption

The cynical attitude of the political parties became
increasingly explicable when the leaders of movement highlighted the cases of
corruption of the members of Parliament that have been stuck at various stages
of investigation or trial without being taken to their logical conclusion.

It was pointed out, especially, that about a dozen members
of the central council of ministers, including the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee who has since become the President of
India, face serious allegations of corruption based on credible evidence
surfacing in the public domain.

“These cases will never see the light of the day. How can
they when the investigative agencies are controlled by the people who are to be
investigated?” said leaders of the movement.

With no credible answer to this question, the government
tried to brazen it out, ignoring the last round of the agitation in July-August
this year which, however, also exposed the weaknesses of the leaders of the
movement.

What happened in July-August was nothing short of a
fraudulent end to a very successful citizens’ movement just when it was badly
needed to be sustained for a long haul for achieving not just the objective of
enacting an independent anti-corruption agency, but also for broader set of
governance reforms.

People duped,
betrayed

Into the eighth or ninth day of the agitation in New
Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, the main strategist of the movement,
revealed his own electoral ambitions by staging a coup of sorts. It was
announced, clearly under Kejriwal’s influence, that the movement would not gain
anything by continuing the protests and needed to give people a “political
alternative”.

The pretext was a letter received from “23 eminent citizens”
who having expressed concern over the health of fasting protesters urged Anna
Hazare, the leader of the movement, to discontinue the agitation and prepare
“to give the country a political alternative”.

The gathering present at the protest site as well as
supporters elsewhere were asked to send text messages – ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for the
“political alternative” – a farce staged in a crude attempt to mask the
decision that had already been taken under Kejriwal’s influence.

Hopes belied

After giving a new meaning to “politics” and defining what
“politics” should ideally mean, Jan Lokpal Andolan subverted its own great
success under the weaknesses and narrow political ambitions of its leaders.

The hopes of a “political alternative” which could have been
achieved by putting public pressure on a thoroughly corrupt system to reform
itself were thus shattered.

It would be fair to say that it was the failure of the
entire movement – the leadership as well as the public who supported it. That’s
because the ordinary supporters tolerated a leadership that baulked at
democratizing the decision making of the movement which then became vulnerable
to the whims and fancies of a few.

Having betrayed the trust of the people, Arvind Kejriwal has
since been staging his own private protests and demonstrations in order to get
a few seats in the central and states legislatures.

The people, however, are smart enough to see through the
charade.

Since public support has vanished, Kejriwal’s press
conferences exposing the instances of corruption against the high and mighty,
whom he joined in the electoral fray, have amounted to nothing more than some
lively coverage in the media with no hopes of any reform.

Meanwhile, India
is sliding back down the abyss of corruption, a vicious class warfare and is
more firmly in the grip of the wealthy elite that has been destroying whatever
is left of our democratic institutions.

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About Me

Delhi-based journalist, having worked for a business magazine and a news agency.
Also worked as a researcher on local democracy and right to information for an NGO.
Having left my latest employment at a magazine on governance, where I contributed to ideation and wrote on public policy from the perspective of common citizens, in September 2010, I am currently engaged in freelancing.
At the NGO, I participated in a rare experiment in bringing face to face the people and their representatives and officials in the municipal bodies. At the business magazine, I wrote on finance, economy, business, education, healthcare, etc. At the news agency, my longest employer so far, I worked on the business and economy desk, but also did some news reporting and writing. I believe we Indians are going through a very slow but sure democratic awakening, which is due to greater flow of information. We must sustain this process of awakening and help each other out of ignorance. This ignorance enslaves us to the elite that currently handles the levers of power.